On Tuesday, Prague city councillors officially approved plans for a new
pavilion to be built just within Prague's Stromovka Park. An ultra-modern
structure, the building has been planned for
one reason: to house a famous series of paintings created by Czech art
nouveau painter Alphonse Mucha, the Slav Epic. Completed in 1928, the
series celebrates the mythical beginnings and legendary milestones in Slav
history. Remarkably, until now the series has lacked a 'permanent' home.
That will now change.

Alphonse Mucha - 'The Epic of Slavic History'
Back in 1928 the American weekly 'Time' noted its monumental completion:
The Epic of Slavic History, or Slav Epic as it is known now. Twenty
paintings so enormous, the weekly described Mucha as working on
step-ladders to get them done. The series took the great Czech painter 18
years to complete, and when it was finished he donated it to the Czech
capital. He even designed a building for the collection in Prague, which
was never built. The series, though for a time displayed at Prague's
famous Veletrzni Palace, was later moved to the small Moravian town of
Moravsky Krumlov - where it can be seen to this day. The painter's
daughter-in-law Geraldine Mucha:

"There are two Krumlovs in this country: one is Cesky Krumlov
and
that is a little gem. And, it has had millions of foreign money poured
into it and it is a gem. Now, this is Moravsky Krumlov. Well, it's a nice
village, but that's all it has: the Slav Epic. "

Soon, Moravsky Krumlov won't even have that. Now that Prague has given the
green-light for its new Mucha pavilion, the work will eventually be moved
to the site (designed apparently to look like an enormous box of matches
on its side) found just within Prague's Stromovka Park.

Stromovka Park
But even there, not everyone is happy. Not everyone agrees that the
building - or for that matter even the location - will be suitable.
Architect and former Prague mayor Jan Kasl, for example, has said in
public that he would have far preferred a classical-style building, within
the city's historic centre. And, even Geraldine Mucha - who is one of the
trustees of the Mucha Society - is less than taken by the idea of the
pavilion in Stromovka Park:

"They want to use those canvases as a lure for foreign tourists
into
a rather dead end of Prague."

Even so, the project - estimated at 150 million crowns (the equivalent of
6.3 million US dollars) now appears will go ahead. The Mucha pavilion is
to be built by 2010.